Emma Goldrick - The Unmarried Bride

‘Breakfast,’ Abby announced heartily. Cleo wavered. Caught between principle and practicality, the dog gave up and followed her mistress down the hall. It had been almost twenty-four hours since Cleo had eaten and any word having to do with food was welcome and eagerly anticipated.

Breakfast? Abby asked herself as she led the way down to the kitchen. What in the world have we got to eat?

There had been something nagging her all night, despite the bad dream with Selby Farnsworth. She had brought enough food for herself to last ten days. There certainly wasn’t enough to last for three weeks, especially for three people. Unless there was some way to call for a boat, the food was going to be getting scarce after a few days. But she’d keep her secret for at least a couple of days.

There was a propane refrigerator in the far corner of the kitchen, fed through a flexible tube that ran out to the back of the house. When she had first come in the day before, she had packed all her perishables in it, fired the cooling pilot light and then had gone off and forgotten it.

Now she opened the door carefully. A blast of cold air struck her face. Inventory: two dozen eggs, a rasher of bacon, sausages galore, bread for toasting. That last was a problem. The only way she could make toast was over the flames in the fireplace, and that fire was now only a glowing ember or two. After a ten-minute struggle Abby gave up.

She had been a girl scout, but as she recalled she had only been awarded the badge for sewing, and had to get her mother to sew it on for her. While she pondered on the problem of toast, Harry wandered into the kitchen. He looked hungry and just a little intimidated by the presence of Cleo. Abby smiled at him because he was really just a little boy. He was in the process of growing in his adult teeth; there were a few missing from the line up. There has to be a way to get on his good side, she told herself. With all of the training I’ve had there must be something I can try.

‘Are you gonna cook breakfast?’ Harry asked. ‘Have you fed the dog? She won’t eat me, will she?’

‘Cleo?’ Abby answered. ‘My dog never eats my friends. She only eats people who aren’t my friends. She and I have an agreement on that subject. But I’m glad you reminded me. I haven’t fed her this morning and she probably is hungry.’

Harry shrugged his shoulders, stubbed his toe on a worn section of the linoleum and looked up at her with a wicked little gleam in his eyes. ‘Could I be a friend of yours? Can I help feed her?’

‘Well,’ Abby drawled it out, ‘perhaps, maybe; it would depend.’

‘Depend on what?’

‘Well, it depends on how you treat me. Friends treat friends nicely. You haven’t been that nice to me so far. Are you going to be friendly to me? We have to work through the friend part first and then we’ll talk about you feeding her.’

‘I don’t mind,’ the boy said. ‘I ain’t scared of that.’ He had both hands behind his back and he was very slowly moving across the carpet towards her, very, very slowly.

Cleo watched him carefully. As he got close enough to be within her attack range she came up to a half-crouch and growled a little. Harry came to a complete stop and the look he gave to Abby was one of, You told me it was OK, so what did I do wrong? Abby smiled and reached out to pat the old dog on the head. ‘That’s enough, Cleo. That’s enough. This is a friend. Now, Harry, hold out one hand in front of her nose. Don’t touch her.’

The boy gulped and then carefully, as if he were guarding a treasure, moved his left hand from behind his back. It was still clutched in a fist and he extended it slowly in the dog’s direction. Cleo came all the way to her feet, looked up at her mistress and then back at the boy. She took a couple of sniffs at the proffered hand and after a moment the old collie licked the knuckles.

‘There you are,’ Abby said. ‘You have been identified as a friend of mine, which makes you a friend of Cleo’s. OK?’

‘I suppose you and me can be friends. Are you gonna cook breakfast or feed Cleo first?’

‘I suppose I could start our breakfast if you’ll go upstairs to my bedroom and get her bag of food. Once you get it down here, you can put some in a bowl for her along with some water. You will have helped to feed her at that point and you will have become one of Cleo’s best friends. She loves anyone who feeds her. The quickest way to Cleo’s heart is through her stomach.’

She set the bread aside while Harry clumped up the stairs and she reached for the eggs. The propane stove chirped on without a bit of trouble. In a moment or two she constructed a fine bunch of fried eggs, sunny side up. Just enough, she thought to herself, and turned around with the platter in both hands, moving in the direction of the kitchen table.

She hadn’t heard Harry come back down the stairs so she was startled when she saw a different male face sitting at the breakfast table, beaming at her and her dish of eggs. She stopped with one foot still in the air. ‘I didn’t hear you come in,’ she said suspiciously.

‘No,’ he admitted. There was a very insincere grin on his face. ‘No, I was afraid that if I made a noise you might be surprised and drop something. My, that looks nice.’

‘If she dropped the plate then we don’t get anything nice to eat,’ the boy said as he came back into the kitchen with the bag of dog food.

‘I’ve got to teach you better, boy,’ his father grumbled. ‘Don’t play Abraham Lincoln. You don’t have to be all that honest.’

‘Yes, he does,’ Abby insisted. ‘And, besides, after he’s finished feeding the dog, there’s just enough food here for Harry and me.’

She put the platter down in front of her own space, shovelled an egg and a sausage on to the boy’s plate and put it at the open space at the table. Harry was very busily filling the bowls Abby had found with dog food and water. He was looking very serious about this task and was very gratified when Cleo shouldered him out of the way to get at her food. All of the good food smells had been driving her crazy and she was hungry !

‘I guess that means that she likes me, huh?’ It sounded to Abby as if Harry Farnsworth needed someone to approve of his actions. He needed to be praised.

‘Yes. I guess that means that you are one of the top people on Cleo’s list of friends and you did that very well. I didn’t realise that the bag was so big. How did you get it down the stairs?’

‘I just bumped it down the stairs,’ Harry semi-bragged. He had done something good and she had noticed. She was someone he liked for some reason. The fact that she had a dog was a big point in her favour, but he liked her anyway.

‘Then why don’t you sit down and eat your breakfast while it’s hot?’ She turned around and went back to the frying-pan, which was still sizzling with bacon. By the time she had settled that and had returned to the table again, all the rest of the food had disappeared.

‘Which one of you?’ she said, eyeing them both disgustedly. ‘Which one of you ate my breakfast?’

‘Not me,’ the boy said. ‘I wouldn’t do a thing like that.’ He ducked his head so that he would not be looking at his father.

‘Well,’ Selby said, ‘if he’s innocent, and you’re innocent, I guess I’m the guilty party.’

‘You’ve got a nerve,’ she growled at him. ‘You threaten me with a peanut butter sandwich and now you expect me to cook something deliciously delightful for your breakfast?’

‘That is exactly what I hoped for,’ he said, and made no attempt to hide the twinkle in those big brown eyes.

‘I have a good mind,’ she told him, her green eyes sparking, ‘to dispossess you right this minute. You’ve got enough nerve to—’